Engineer James Dumesic named to ‘Scientific American 50’

James Dumesic, Chemical and Biological Engineering Steenbock Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has received a 2007 Scientific American "SciAm 50" award for his innovative alternative fuels research.

The magazine annually publishes a list paying tribute to individuals and organizations who, through their efforts in research, business and policy-making, are driving advances in science and technology that lay the groundwork for a better future.

Dumesic and his team developed a two-stage process for turning biomass-derived sugar into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), a liquid transportation fuel with 40 percent greater energy density than ethanol.

Diminishing oil reserves, and the threat of global warming caused by releasing otherwise trapped carbon into the atmosphere, have researchers searching for a sustainable, carbon-neutral fuel to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel. By chemically engineering sugar through a series of steps involving acid and copper catalysts, salt and butanol as a solvent, UW–Madison researchers created a path to just such a fuel.

"Currently, ethanol is the only renewable liquid fuel produced on a large scale," says Dumesic. "But ethanol suffers from several limitations. It has relatively low energy density, evaporates readily, and can become contaminated by absorption of water from the atmosphere. It also requires an energy-intensive distillation process to separate the fuel from water."

Not only does dimethylfuran have higher energy content, it also addresses other ethanol shortcomings. DMF is not soluble in water and therefore cannot become contaminated by absorbing water from the atmosphere. DMF is stable in storage and, in the evaporation stage of its production, consumes one-third of the energy required to evaporate a solution of ethanol produced by fermentation for biofuel applications.

Dumesic and graduate students Yuriy Roman-Leshkov, Christopher J. Barrett and Zhen Y. Liu developed their new catalytic process for creating DMF by expanding upon earlier work improving the process for making an important chemical intermediate, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), from sugar.

Dumesic was named to The Scientific American 50 in 2003 for his work pioneering economical catalysts for turning sugars into hydrogen fuel.